Yesterday, Jordan Baker and I had a great conversation about how to make LifeCampTO even better. We wanted to figure out how to give people more time for quick connections and discussion. =)

So here’s the plan for the next LifeCampTO:

Intros: (10:30 – 11:00, 30 minutes) – 2 minutes per person, strict.

Come prepared with the ONE THING you _most_ want help with and the ONE THING you’re really good at and want to offer help with. We’ll keep the number system and use that to track who wants to contact whom after the meeting. Some people missed connections because neither person wrote down numbers, so we’ll keep a running tally on a whiteboard or a projected spreadsheet. If you don’t want your e-mail address to be included in the automatic matchmaking list, tell me during the event and I can make a note of that. Numbers might be pre-assigned before the event, and you can post your intros then, too. Come early and eat brunch. =)

Small Conversations (11:00-11:40, 40 minutes):

5 rounds of 6 minutes each, with a few minutes between for a mad scramble to find the next person you wanted to talk to. A timer will announce the halfway mark so that people can switch to offer help to the other, if they require this prompting. If people feel up to paying a small fee, we can arrange for appetizers to appear.

Large Conversations (11:40-12:30, 50 minutes):

2 rounds of 20 minutes each, for large topics that bubble out of the introductions. People can self-organize into whatever-size groups they want to talk about stuff. Ideal time to grab a quick snack.

Think Tank (12:30-12:45, 15 minutes):

Someone wins the think tank lottery! The lucky winner shares his or her goal/challenge/topic of interest and we collectively brainstorm how to help.

Wrap-up (12:45-12:50, 5 minutes):

Thanks, follow-ups, etc. People are invited to stay and chat over lunch with new-found connections. If you have any additional connections you want me to make, give me the numbers and I’ll update my spreadsheet.

After the event, I will run my super-fantastic automatic matchmaking thing to connect people with other people through e-mail (omitting e-mail addresses for those who opted out of the process). You can then take that information and schedule your own followups.

So that’s the plan. Now, we can either make a mad scramble for it and do it on February 28 (a week’s notice!), or have the next one on March 28 or 29 or so. Personally, I’ve got a few talks coming up and I may need some time to cram, so I’d prefer to postpone. But hey, if you want to get together and make it happen, go ahead and run with it! =)

Recent comments

sachac Mmm... I used Gnus scoring to do something like that, since you can use adaptive scoring to automatically score up responses to you. http://www.emacs.uniyar.ac.ru/doc/em24h/emacs183.htm might... – Mail with Gnus on Windows

narendraj9 Hi, thanks for the great article. I have question: Is it possible to use `gnus` filtering capabilities to have replies to a question that I... – Mail with Gnus on Windows